The new Warren Beatty biography claims Beatty slept with 12,775 women, including Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton and Madonna.  This inspired The Daily Beast to compile a “Greatest Studs of All Time” List.  Heavily weighted by their “number of notches” statistic.  A few thoughts.

The raw numbers, like Wilt Chamberlain’s “20,000” are absurd.  Yes, he slept with many women.  They are based on a women per day ratio.  There weren’t days where Wilt was travelling, addled with Montezuma’s revenge, or just bored?  Did he then sleep with six women in one day to make up for it?

Judging a stud by sheer number of women is like judging a pitcher by number of wins.  It’s not specific enough to say anything meaningful.  It assumes all conquests are created equal.  Joe Dimaggio marrying Marilyn Monroe. under this assumption, would equal one Tiger cocktail waitress.

There should be an adjusted OPS+ type formula.  Degree of difficulty is huge.  Being an absolute dictator (Castro), having women paid to have sex with you (Ron Jeremy) or being in a rock band whose apex came at the height of the hard drugs era and before AIDS (Gene Simmons) is like being a left-handed pull hitter in Yankee Stadium.

The list contains British reality star Calum Best, based on his self-professed claim he’s slept with hundreds of women.  Calum Best is famous because of his father, lady-killing Man United legend George Best, more than 40 years after his father’s prime.  It seems Dad may have been the right choice.

Magic Johnson is estimated to have slept with 1,000 women before his HIV diagnosis.  This roughly equals the number of times he reiterates it was only women.

Our choice? � Greg Ostertag.  By far the list’s biggest omission.